I Wasn't Prepared for What I Saw Through My Back Window

The day started out with so much promise.

The air conditioning expert finally came, after three missed appointments. Our ancient unit did not need to be replaced. The technician discovered and fixed a loose wire. He didn’t even charge us for the repair!

We planned to go out that afternoon and get strawberry plants at the home improvement store. Then we’d enjoy the warm spring sunshine and plant our container garden.

Life would come back. After a long winter, spring had finally arrived. We’d both been vaccinated, and I’d booked us flights to see my family on the East Coast.

And then I looked out the back window.

Five minutes earlier or later

My eye was attracted to motion, and a baby bunny scratching at the dirt.

“Oh, how cute, he’s digging in the garden.”

Except, he wasn’t. Those were his death kicks.

A moment later, the baby bunny lay still in the dirt, never to hop or run or frolic in the garden, ever again.

Sauntering slowly across the sidewalk away from our fence was an orange feral cat. He’d killed the bunny and then just wandered away.

In that moment, I hated the orange cat.

He’d come into our garden, pushed his way through our fence, then killed one of the bunnies that lived under our deck.

If I’d only looked out the window five minutes earlier, I could have shouted at him and chased him away. If I’d looked out five minutes later, I would not have known how the bunny died.

But because I’d looked out when I had, and seen the bunny’s death kicks, I felt like I was somehow complicit in his death.

The bunnies felt safe and secure in our garden. Every spring, I would see the mother bunny bring the babies out into the sunlight. They were so tiny, they would fit in a soup spoon.

As the days progressed, the babies would grow bigger, and be allowed out on their own. I’d take photos through the sliding glass door, so that my presence didn’t disturb them. Come summer, they would be almost full size, drowsing in the heat beneath the raspberry bushes. By fall, they’d be ready to take on the dangerous world of hawks and coyotes that waited for them outside the fence.

I liked leaving the sliding glass door open, letting the garden breeze into the kitchen. Our two cats enjoyed sitting by the screen door smelling the outdoors.

And the bunnies gradually realized that our cats could not get to them. They would hop past the screen door with no concern for the cats on the other side.

When they smelled the orange cat, they didn’t know he wasn’t safely on the other side of a screen. They didn’t know he could get to them. And now one of them was dead.

It wasn’t the bunny

This wasn’t the first dead animal I’d seen in our garden. We got birds with broken necks after heavy storms. Or birds that had flown into the picture windows by mistake. Normally we just swept them up and put them in the trash.

It wasn’t even the first non-accidental animal death I’d seen.

I grew up with cats. Outdoor cats, who supplemented their diet with a wide variety of birds and rodents. I often helped clean up the remains they left behind on the front porch.

I’d never been mad at our cats for eating other animals. It was the circle of life.

But I was furious with the orange cat.

I told myself that if he’d eaten the bunny, at least I’d have been able to understand it. He was feral, and hungry. But to kill it and walk away showed a callous disregard for life.

Except then the orange cat came back. And started to eat the bunny he’d killed.

I wanted to run out there and scream at him. Beat him off with a broom. Tell him he’d done enough, and to leave the poor, dead bunny alone.

Then I realized, it wasn’t the bunny that was upsetting me. And the whole house of cards collapsed.

An omen of death

One of the reasons I love watching the bunnies in the spring is that they’re signs of life returning. The dead brown earth bursts forth with greenery, and the baby bunnies come out to play.

It reminds me that no matter how long and cold the winter, spring eventually comes. Life triumphs.

By killing the baby bunny, the orange cat killed my sign of life. He’d turned it into an omen of death.

And I had to face the fact that my father was going to die.

Not right away. Not within six months, as we’d originally feared when his doctor said he had thyroid cancer.

But he’s 95. In the last few years, he’s lost my mom, had heart surgery, and had surgery to remove bladder cancer. His spinal stenosis has gotten so bad he has trouble walking for more than a block. And this was a man who used to jog for miles, who would go on long walks just for the joy of it.

In my mind, he’s still that person. He’s strong, vibrant, and will live forever.

But he won’t. And I can’t pretend he will anymore.

The orange cat saw to that.

Final thoughts

I tossed aside all the writing I’d planned to do today. My heart wasn’t in it.

How could I be perky and chipper and tell people how to improve themselves when I was crumbling inside?

I didn’t know at the time why I felt sick to my stomach and unable to write. I didn’t know why I spent the afternoon listening to emo angst rock music.

But eventually, I figured it out.

Today was a terrible day, because an even worse day is coming soon. And no matter how much I don’t want it to come, I can’t do anything to stop it. I’m powerless in the face of nature’s red tooth and claw.

But no matter how bitter and desolate that future winter seems, I have to remember, life will triumph. Spring will come.

One day, another bunny will frolic in our garden.